Just By Chance
by Higuchimon
Summary: Daisuke never meant to get involved in one of Ken's cases. It sort of just happened.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> Digimon Adventure 02  
><strong>Title:<strong> Just By Chance  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Daisuke, Ken  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 2,483||**Status:** One-shot  
><strong>Genre:<strong> Adventure, Humor||**Rated:** PG  
><strong>Challenge:<strong> Written for One Character Boot Camp, prompt #28, coincidence; Written for Diversity Writing Challenge, section D, #26, write using the in media res device  
><strong>Summary:<strong> [one-shot, Daisuke, Ken; One Character Boot Camp & Diversity Writing Challenge] Daisuke never meant to get involved in one of Ken's cases. It sort of just happened.

* * *

><p>Daisuke's fingers scrolled quickly, trying to find Ken in his contacts. His attempts weren't made any easier by the fact he kept looking up and over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of the half-dozen or so people moving through the warehouse, wanting to make certain they hadn't caught a glimpse of <em>him<em>.

If they did, then he was going to be in a lot of trouble, and he would really rather not be. He did his best trouble-dealing with V-mon's help and V-mon wasn't with him today.

_This would happen today, then, wouldn't it?_ He all but rolled his eyes at the thought, glancing back down at the phone. His D-Terminal might've been a little quicker, but Miyako and Koushirou had gathered up all of theirs to do maintenance and repair work, so he had to depend on his cell phone. That was part of what was taking so long as well; his fingers weren't as used to the touch screen as he was the controls of the D-Terminal.

He set his jaw and kept scrolling. He needed to get the word to Ken as soon as he could, before the gang or whatever they were finished packing up and left. He could follow them, with or without V-mon, but it would make finding them harder for Ken.

Daisuke shot another glance upward, doing a quick headcount. As far as he could tell they were all still there. He looked back at his phone, just as Ken's number came up. Good. Great. Excellent.

A tap or two was all it took and he started to pull the phone up to his ear. _Be there, Ken, be there!_ He had no idea of where his friend was supposed to be for the day, but so long as he answered the phone and didn't waste time doing who knew what, then everything would be fine.

"Hey! Who are you?" The voice came from far too close and Daisuke knew that everything wasn't going to be fine, at least not for him. Not yet, anyway. "There's someone over there!"

"Daisuke?" Ken sounded more than a little confused as to why Daisuke was calling him right now. "Is this important? I've kind of got something I'm working on."

"You have no idea," Daisuke muttered. "But I don't know how much I can talk."

He could hear footsteps hurrying closer to him and started moving. The quicker he could get all of this sorted out, the less chance there would be that someone would try to strangle him. He hadn't seen any Digimon in the area, which meant that none of them had partners. That was all to the good.

"Daisuke? What's going on?"

More voices. "Who is that? What're they doing here? How'd he even get in here?"

Ken's voice sharpened. "Daisuke, can you answer me? Are you all right?"

Daisuke ducked down behind another pile of boxes and tugged a stray bit of cloth over himself. It wouldn't do for a cover for very long, but a few moments were all that he needed. "Define all right."

An exasperated sigh. "Are you in the kind of situation where I should find a few friends and come looking for you?"

"Would you do that for me? And if you did, would those friends be armed?" Daisuke kept his voice as low as he could and still be certain Ken could hear him. What worried him about this was if Ken wasn't the only person hearing him.

"Where are you and could you give me a few more details?" Daisuke couldn't see what Ken was doing on the other side of the line but he hoped it involved taking notes as well as making certain he got there as soon as he could. He _really_ wished today hadn't been V-mon's day to go visit the Digital World. Or if it had to be, that he hadn't stumbled over these people on that day.

"You know those people you were looking for? The ones who make their living buying and selling things they don't actually have any right to?" He sort of recalled Ken mentioning something like that as being his most recent case. He didn't always pay attention when Ken talked about his work and now he wished that he had, at least this once.

The noise Ken made sounded enough like agreement for Daisuke to keep talking. "Funny story, then. I was taking the cart around and I dropped a few things." Which was a fun way to say that he was used to V-mon being there to give him a hand and when he wasn't, it took a lot more effort than he'd planned for to get everything sorted and he probably should've taken today off anyway. "So when I was trying to pick up everything, I saw them moving around in here, and I got curious." Which was simply a way to say that he was nosy and wondered what was going on and wandered in there to find out, since no one seemed to want to have ramen today.

He wished he had his cart with him here. Maybe then he could've tried to sell some and gotten their fingerprints or something.

Again, a sigh. This time it was one that Ken seemed to use when Daisuke didn't bother to think things through. Ken used that one a lot. Daisuke wasn't sure how often he'd used it since they'd become friends, but the answer was probably 'a lot'.

"Can you tell me where you are?" Ken finally asked. "And are you safe?"

Daisuke told him the block and building number, breathing harder with each word. He could hear them coming closer and he needed to start moving, before they saw him. He also didn't bother answering if he were safe or not. He didn't think he was, and he wasn't going to worry about it. Worrying about it wouldn't make him safe, it would just make him worried.

"We'll be there as soon as we can," Ken said, and Daisuke wanted to say something else, when the cloth he'd been hiding under was pulled back, and four very annoyed faces glared at him.

Daisuke flashed a smile, one that he'd learned how to copy from Yamato when the older man still performed with his band. His wasn't quite as spectacular, but it had served him well while pushing his noodle cart around. "Would you believe that I've got a noodle cart outside and I came in here to see if you wanted something to eat?"

"No." The tallest one of them grabbed Daisuke by the shoulder and yanked him out from his makeshift hiding place. Daisuke's phone clattered to the ground and one of the others snatched it up.

"Let's see who he's been making calls to. Say, the police, maybe?" The one holding it shot glares between Daisuke and the phone.

"All I did was call my best friend!" Daisuke hated lying. He wasn't all that good at it, so he usually never bothered. When he did try, he usually forgot what he'd said part of the way through and that never made it any better. So he told the truth, even now.

Well, heavily edited truth, at least. He wasn't dim to the point of not realizing that if they knew the cops were on the way that he'd suffer all manner of intense damage. He might even anyway. His best chance was to keep them distracted until said cops arrived.

The one holding onto Daisuke tossed him into the other two, each of whom grabbed an arm and squeezed hard. The sound that came out of Daisuke couldn't properly be called a squeak or a squeal, but something along the lines of 'high-pitched yowl that he wouldn't have been surprised to find out could break glass'.

He decided the name needed a little work. He'd figure it out later. Maybe Ken could give him some advice on it.

"Bring him over here, boys," the one who'd first grabbed him said. So far so good, in Daisuke's opinion. They hadn't snapped his neck right away, which always put a happy spin on the day's events. "Until we know what's going on, we'd better not take any chances."

Daisuke could agree with that, as long as 'not taking any chances' didn't end up with his vital organs anywhere other than where they really belonged. Still, he didn't intend to be a passive little victim here. Instead, he dug his heels in.

"Come on, I've got a huge assortment of ramen you can pick from! I bet it's all still hot, too. We can go outside and get it!" Oops, that didn't look like a good idea, not with how they stared at him. "Or I can go and bring in here!" That didn't look any better. Today wasn't turning into one of his better days.

Grabber, as Daisuke dubbed him in his head, gestured abruptly to the other two. "I said bring him along. And bring that rag. If we've got to shut him in a closet, I'd rather we didn't have to listen to him babbling."

"I do not babble!" Daisuke snapped. "I'm completely serious! What makes you think I wouldn't want to make a sale?"

Grabber said nothing, at least not in words. From the grinding of his teeth, he wasn't all that happy, though. Daisuke decided it might be a good idea not to press his luck just yet. Maybe once Ken and his fellow officers arrived. That would be the time to do it.

The two who kept hold of him tossed him into a rickety chair that nearly fell over with the addition of his weight, then each took up a position behind him guaranteed to make certain he couldn't go anywhere without them knowing about it. Daisuke would've felt honored if he didn't know they were all looking for a good reason to rearrange his body parts in a fashion guaranteed to cause pain and suffering.

"Well?" Grabber looked over at the one who held Daisuke's phone. "Anything there?"

"You are not going to believe this. If these names are all the right ones, then we've got ourselves something of a celebrity here." Phone-stealer declared. From the look on Grabber's face, he wanted more information than that. "How many people do you know who'd have names like Ichijouji Ken, Ishida Yamato, Yagami Taichi, and Izumi Koushirou on their contacts? And have just called Ichijouji Ken?"

Oh, yeah, there was that little thing about most of them being world-famous for one reason or another. Daisuke tended to forget that. So more people knew his friends than just him. That was a good thing, wasn't it?

Grabber folded his arms over his chest and stared down at Daisuke. "Yeah, I've heard of them. All involved in that other world stuff." He chewed his lip, still staring. "So who is it we've got here?"

"Well, guessing from the numbers, I'd say it's likely Motomiya Daisuke. He really does run a noodle cart." Phone-Stealer looked at the phone again. Daisuke wondered if he'd have to get a new one and hoped not. Getting everyone's number transferred over would take ages, not to mention finding all the background images he used.

"Noodle cart. Not worth a whole lot as a hostage, though, is he?" Grabber mused, a look in his eyes that Daisuke didn't find pleasant at all. "Unless his cop buddy shows up. That's Ichijouji, isn't he?"

"That would be me," Ken agreed from the door, eyes cool, collected, and burning as they seldom did. "And I really wouldn't advise trying to hold Daisuke hostage. It gets me very upset. You wouldn't believe what happens to people when I'm upset at them." The corners of his lips turned upward. "Why don't you tell them, Daisuke?"

Daisuke leaned back, his own grin matching Ken's. "I've seen people that he's upset with _blow up_." All right, so ImperialDramon's lasers were involved with that, but ImperialDramon wouldn't exist without the two of them, right? So that counted. "And sometimes, people he's upset with just vanish and we never hear from them again." That hadn't happened very often, and to be fair, he wasn't entirely certain if Ken had even had anything to do with it, but it _had_ happened. So it counted. Sort of.

He racked his brain for a few more moments, coming up with as many other scenarios as he could think of for what happened to people who got on Ken's bad side. He was tempted to go back all the way to the Kaiser days, but Ken preferred that they not bring that sort of thing up, and Daisuke wasn't going to ignore his wishes.

"All right! That's enough!" Grabber growled. "I'm about ready to gag you right now if you don't cork it up!" He shot a viscous glare at Ken. "We're leaving, with our stuff, and we just might take this guy with us if that'll keep you out of our hair."

Ken slowly shook his head. "It won't. If anything, I'll just chase you down that much faster. If you've got any sense, you'll just give up now anyway."

"And why is that?" Grabber wanted to know. "Because you've got Digimon? Or lots of friends coming to help?"

Again Ken shook his head. "No. Because I'm not the only officer here and you're extremely surrounded." He gestured around, and only now did the crooks take a look to see the shadowy forms of a dozen or so officers, all positioned to cut off escape from virtually every angle.

Grabber stared at them all and started to turn toward Daisuke. Whatever he had in mind, Daisuke only grinned, bounced up out of the chair, and made his way over to Ken, avoiding anyone else's attempts to grab hold of him, and taking his phone back as he did.

"Thanks!" He grinned wide enough to split his face apart at his best friend. "Free ramen on me tonight!"

Ken sighed, this one reading more like 'I'm glad he's alive so now I can strangle him myself' than anything else. "Daisuke, are you all right? Not hurt or anything?"

"Nope!" Daisuke dusted his phone off and tucked it away. "So, about that ramen?"

Ken gritted his teeth, then reached over and smacked Daisuke on the head lightly. "That is for making my life just a bit more stressful than it has to be. Would you please not do that anymore?"

Daisuke didn't stop grinning. He saw no reason not to. "No promises! And you can thank me for finding your bad guys for you later." If it hadn't been for him, Ken might not have run across these guys for weeks!

If that didn't call for a celebratory ramen dinner, then he didn't know what did.

**The End**


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